Tax Policy Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics

Contrary to Dennis Prager, many people have no problem drawing the somewhat socialistic implications of these two ancient religions. C. S. Lewis in his Mere Christianity admitted that a truly Christian society would be more socialist society. Now, we have a detailed article (hat-tip Andrew Sullivan) that claims to be "An Evaluation of Federal Tax Policy Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics." The article was written by Susan Pace Hamill of the University of Alabama School of Law. From the abstract:

This article severely criticizes the Bush Administration's tax policies under the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics. I first document that Judeo-Christian ethics is the most relevant moral analysis for tax policy because almost eighty percent of Americans and well over ninety percent of the Congress, including President Bush, claim to adhere to the Christian or Jewish faiths. I also show that evaluating federal tax policy under Judeo-Christian principles not only passes constitutional muster but is also appropriate under the norms of a democracy. I then provide a complete theological framework that can be applied to any tax policy structure. Using sources that include leading Evangelical and other Protestant scholars, Papal Encyclicals and Jewish scholars, I prove that tax policy structures meeting the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics must raise adequate revenues that not only cover the needs of the minimum state but also ensure that all citizens have a reasonable opportunity to reach their potential. Among other things, reasonable opportunity requires adequate education, healthcare, job training and housing. Using these theological sources, I also establish that flat and consumption tax regimes which shift a large part of the burden to the middle classes are immoral. Consequently, Judeo-Christian based tax policy requires the tax burden to be allocated under a moderately progressive regime.

So far so good. I have never accepted that Judeo-Christian values lead to laissez-faire capitalism. However, Hamill manages to reach this bizarre conclusion:

Using a wealth of sources, I then establish that the moral values driving the Bush Administration's tax policy decisions reflect objectivist ethics, a form of atheism that exalts individual property rights over all other moral considerations.

Certainly, I would like to hope that Objectivism is influencing the President but judging by his actions the influence has, at best, been surface deep. The fact that the President is hesitant to raise taxes is certainly commendable (though I would say that Ayn Rand was hardly the first American to call taxation evil -- this used to be a far more mainstream position). But his many other positions are hardly consonant with what Objectivists would like to see done. Nevertheless, the article includes a mostly surprisingly reasonable summary of Objectivism:

Objectivist ethics views human beings as independent agents and deems each person acting in his or her own rational self-interest as the only avenue to reach moral correctness. Because individual autonomy and right of each person to be able to personally benefit from their efforts in the free market are valued above all other considerations, objectivist ethics unequivocally epitomizes the “leave us alone” philosophy of Grover Norquist and his coalition, which includes the Bush Administration and therefore it is reasonable to assume also includes President
Bush himself.

When morally evaluating legal and economic structures, the principles of objectivist ethics state that in order to avoid discouraging personally autonomy, government functions beyond what is needed to protect each individual’s life, liberty and private property should ideally be eliminated. Because taxation is considered a restraint impinging on the personal autonomy and right of every individual to enjoy the profits from his or her success, the ideal tax policy under objectivist ethics would raise only enough tax revenues to cover the needs of the minimum state and would make the payment of all taxes completely voluntary. Opportunities such as education would be available only in the private free market economy and minimum safety nets providing subsistence and healthcare for the poor and elderly would only be covered by voluntary charitable contributions. In that proponents of objectivist ethics recognize that on a practical level their ideals cannot be fully achieved, they politically advocate cutting all government expenditures beyond the needs of the minimum state as much as possible while substantially reducing the tax burden of the wealthiest individuals and businesses by adopting a flat/consumption tax model. The moral conversation surrounding President Bush’s first term tax cuts, and, the long term goals of taking those trends further towards a flat model squarely reflects the values of objectivist ethics.

Objectivist ethics represents a form of atheism because the human person is substituted for a supreme deity. Within the framework of objectivist ethics individuals owe no moral obligations to endure greater sacrifices for anyone else’s benefit because only each individual’s own self-interest has any moral relevance. Human beings acting in their long term self-interest are considered the sole source of all wealth, and, through the strength of their own rationality are viewed as capable of acting morally without God’s grace or God’s standards of justice as a guide. By providing moral justification for legal structures, such as tax policy, that minimize and seek to eliminate the moral obligations owed to God and therefore to all others in the community, objectivist ethics presents a monumental stumbling block for all Christians and Jews enjoying greater levels of wealth and power than the average person.

Aside from Hamill's frustrating refusal to tread Objectivist as a proper noun, one senses that Hamill has not tried to understand anything beyond Objectivist ethics, which she thinks encompasses the whole philosophy. The reasons for the atheism in Objectivsm are not derived from ethical considerations but for far more fundamental metaphysical and epistemological reasons. The article gives Ayn Rand a lot of credit in influencing the views of today's Conservatives, and certainly some of that is true but really, as far as laissez-faire is concerned, it has a long history in the United States with many supporters particularly in the 19th century. And even in the 20th, given the inconsistency of Bush's own support for capitalism, it's clear that he is far more influenced by moderate, compromising voices than the radicals for capitalism. In the end he is no more influenced by Ayn Rand than Hillary Clinton purportedly is. As Andrew Sullivan states "the Randians could do better" -- and when the time comes, when the culture is ready, we will.

Black Holes, RIP?

Many years ago I planned on being a physicist and spending the rest of my life researching the mysteries of the universe. While I did get an undergraduate degree in physics from UCLA, I did not pursue graduate work and pretty much abandoned the field, at least as far as my occupation is concerned. Nevertheless, I continue to have some enthusiasm for the field and, as a result of my Objectivist philosophy, I particularly maintain an interest in the philosophical implications of physics.

It has been my experience that physics (or rather, certain interpretations of it) is often used to claim that Objectivism violates physical law. Objectivism does claim to have a certain "veto power" over presumed physical claims. That is, physics cannot violate metaphysics. That is because all science in fact depends on the fundamental principles and axioms of metaphysics. No matter what the specifics of the phenomena we discover, the axioms of existence and identity will continue to apply and causality will continue to operate -- entities will act in accordance with their identity. One implication of the Objectivist metaphysics is that infinities cannot be actual but are merely potential. Actually, all existents are necessarily finite because otherwise they would have no specific identity.

So in particular, Objectivists would have some difficulty accepting the existence of Black Holes, if as the theory seems to imply, their existence would require a singularity. This helpful page describes what the theory predicts:

At the center of a black hole lies the singularity, where matter is crushed to infinite density, the pull of gravity is infinitely strong, and spacetime has infinite curvature. Here it's no longer meaningful to speak of space and time, much less spacetime. Jumbled up at the singularity, space and time cease to exist as we know them.

I don't follow the scientific reports on black holes carefully, but based on the popular press, it seemed more and more as if the idea of black holes was becoming less controversial as more and more evidence accumulated for their existence.

Today however, I came across an interesting new report in New Scientist. Apparently,

DARK energy and dark matter, two of the greatest mysteries confronting physicists, may be two sides of the same coin. A new and as yet undiscovered kind of star could explain both phenomena and, in turn, remove black holes from the lexicon of cosmology.

The scientists who have suggested this are George Chapline, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin of Stanford University "and their colleagues." It seems that some of the contradictions embedded in the theory of black holes are finally making some scientists think:

This radical suggestion would get round some fundamental problems posed by the existence of black holes. One such problem arises from the idea that once matter crosses a black hole's event horizon - the point beyond which not even light can escape - it will be destroyed by the space-time "singularity" at the centre of the black hole. Because information about the matter is lost forever, this conflicts with the laws of quantum mechanics, which state that information can never disappear from the universe.

Another problem is that light from an object falling into a black hole is stretched so dramatically by the immense gravity there that observers outside will see time freeze: the object will appear to sit at the event horizon for ever. This freezing of time also violates quantum mechanics. "People have been vaguely uncomfortable about these problems for a while, but they figured they'd get solved someday," says Chapline. "But that hasn't happened and I'm sure when historians look back, they'll wonder why people didn't question these contradictions."

Since I have never completely grasped the physics behind black holes in the first place (or much of the rest of physics, if truth be told), I cannot say whether this new theory is correct. But I do find the following quote from the article quite revealing and hopeful:

Black hole expert Marek Abramowicz at Gothenburg University in Sweden agrees that the idea of dark energy stars is worth pursuing. "We really don't have proof that black holes exist," he says. "This is a very interesting alternative."

Free Speech Campaign

The Ayn Rand Institute has announced a campaign to bring "to bring the Danish cartoons to the widest possible audience—and to arrange a series of panel discussions to discuss the vital need to defend free speech." The Institute is asking for donations to support this project. The letter announcing the campaign is reproduced at Noodlefood. I urge everyone who supports freedom to support this project. I have already made a contribution.

Update 3/8/2006: Added Mohammed cartoon image

South Dakota: A small loophole

In today's edition of Slate, William Saletan writes that a careful reading of the new anti-abortion law implies that "South Dakota gives you five days to kill what it calls your unborn child." This is because while it prohibits taking drugs to abort the embryo after pregnancy has been detected, it does not prohibit them after sex. Thus a window of a few days is opened that legally allows pharmacists and doctors to prescribe women abortive contraceptives before a pregnancy is detected. Saletan points out that:

The purpose of the loophole is to give rape victims a grace period. Americans overwhelmingly think abortion should be allowed in cases of rape. Rape victims are the women most likely to know immediately after sex that they're at high risk of unwanted pregnancy. Give them morning-after pills, and you've solved the political problem.

Of course, this completely goes against the law's own logic:

But now you've got a scientific, moral, and legal problem. The South Dakota law purports to supersede Roe because "scientific advances since the 1973 decision" show that "life begins at the time of conception." It concludes that unborn children, "from fertilization to full gestation," have an "inalienable right to life." Nobody who seriously believed these things would give you five days to kill an embryo, any more than they'd give you five days to kill a baby. The loophole discredits the law's rationale.

I suppose we should be grateful that the law's proponents are not yet fully consistent. But then evil never has to be.

Lowest of the low: Right vs. Left

Usually it is the nihilist left that excels at expressing ideas and engaging in actions that are beneath contempt. However, Robert Tracy of Illustrated Ideas brings to our attention a part of the religious right that seems to want to compete in that category of depravity. The level of profound evil that motivates these "people" simply boggles the mind.

Today in South Dakota

State of South Dakota
EIGHTY-FIRST SESSION
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, 2006
529M0546
HOUSE BILL NO. 1215 (emphasis added, comments in brackets):

Section 1. The Legislature accepts and concurs with the conclusion of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception [life sure -- but do rights begin at that time?], a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization. Moreover, the Legislature finds, based upon the conclusions of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, and in recognition of the technological advances and medical experience and body of knowledge about abortions produced and made available since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, that to fully protect the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother, the rights, interest, and life of her unborn child [Are the elderly then undead bodies since they are potentially corpses?], and the mother's fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child, abortions in South Dakota should be prohibited.

Section 2. That chapter 22-17 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:

No person may knowingly administer to, prescribe for, or procure for, or sell to any pregnant woman any medicine, drug, or other substance with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being. No person may knowingly use or employ any instrument or procedure upon a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being.

Any violation of this section is a Class 5 felony.

Section 3. That chapter 22-17 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:

Nothing in section 2 of this Act may be construed to prohibit the sale, use, prescription, or administration of a contraceptive measure, drug or chemical, if it is administered prior to the time when a pregnancy could be determined through conventional medical testing and if the contraceptive measure is sold, used, prescribed, or administered in accordance with manufacturer instructions.

Section 4. That chapter 22-17 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:

No licensed physician who performs a medical procedure designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant mother is guilty of violating section 2 of this Act. However, the physician shall make reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the mother and the life of her unborn child in a manner consistent with conventional medical practice.

Medical treatment provided to the mother by a licensed physician which results in the accidental or unintentional injury or death to the unborn child is not a violation of this statute.

Nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty.[Isn't that nice? The woman is left to fend for herself because only doctors are subject to criminal penalties, do they know the history of backalley abortions?]
Section 5. That chapter 22-17 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:

Terms used in this Act mean:

(1) "Pregnant," the human female reproductive condition, of having a living unborn human being within her body throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and child birth;

(2) "Unborn human being," an individual living member of the species, homo sapiens, throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth;

(3) "Fertilization," that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum.

Sigh...so it's come to this. Abortion is presently illegal in a state within the U.S. -- this is what happens when liberals think that "pro-choice" is a sufficient response to the faith of the anti-abortionists and more fundamental rational arguments for the morality of abortion are not heard. One can only hope that this law will be challenged and overturned at the Supreme Court though that is far from certain.

Positive News

I came across a couple of items that qualify as good news.

The first item is Robert Tracinski's article The Lessons of the Cartoon Jihad is featured at the top of the Friday, March 3 edition of RealClearPolitics.com. This is an excellent article which criticises both right and left for their inadequate response to this controversy.

The second item is a hopeful sign that another important book by a prominent Objectivist may be published by a distinguished publisher. One of my daily pastimes is to check the resume of John Lewis, Assistant Professor of History at Ashland University. I check the resume because he has a section in which he notes the publication status of the books he has written. Specifically, I was very interested in seeing his Nothing Less than Victory published as it includes the details of his argument against the indequacy of the present war effort with some comparison to a number of historical wars. Over the last few months the listing on the website has mostly been "in progress", which I surmise means that no publisher is looking at it. There was a brief time a while ago when it was listed as "under press review" -- presumably that means that some unidentified publisher was reviewing the book. However, after a week or so of this status, the page was updated back to "in progress." Now however the listing has not only returned to "under press review" but has in fact been updated as follows: "under review, Princeton University Press." This is certainly a very positive and hopeful sign. I certainly hope Prof. Lewis gets the publishing contract. That the book may be published by Princeton University Press will likely ensure that it gets the exposure, publicity and reviews that it deserves.

Codevilla on our "Peace Process"

In 2005, the U.S. government's "war on terror," as well as its operations in Iraq, were entwined in the same tortuous logic by which they had been conceived. After redefining the mission in Iraq from finding Weapons of Mass Destruction, to building democracy, to eliminating terrorists, to enabling the Iraqis to fight for themselves—and not being serious about any of these—the Bush Administration was arguing that to withdraw would be to admit defeat. But what would victory look like?

Thus begins The Logic of the "Peace Process" by Angelo Codevilla in the Winter 2005 issue of the Claremont Review. Codevilla is a rare thing -- a Conservative principled enough to criticise the administration for fighting an indequate war. I don't necessarily agree with all of his prescriptions but his analysis of some the problems with the present "strategy" are very much on target. Here's another long excerpt:

The Bush Administration had understood its commitment to "regime change" to involve merely the removal of some 55 high-ranking Iraqis. It learned the hard way—and even then, incompletely—that Saddam Hussein's regime consisted of at least 2,000 persons who wielded the levers of power in Ba'athist Iraq. They never surrendered; on the contrary, they continued to fight for victory. Thanks to ready sanctuary in Syria; massive amounts of resources stashed as part of the regime's post-invasion strategy; and the U.S. Occupation Authority's opposition to de-Ba'athification—many party members, accordingly, were reinserted into the government—the Ba'ath party resumed its role as the country's most cohesive force outside the Kurdish provinces. Just as important, the party faithfully represents the deepest fears and hatreds of 20% of the population: the Sunni Arabs.

Contrary to what the administration wanted to believe, the Sunni population was the bedrock of the old regime. Although they had suffered almost as much violence at Hussein's hands as other Iraqis, he had given them powers and privileges that they had come to see as their birthright. And so the Sunnis fought to re-subjugate their fellow Iraqis. They murdered judges and intimidated witnesses at Hussein's trial, with the Arab world's tacit support. The Sunni view of America's role was summed up in a local newspaper cartoon that showed Uncle Sam's exit from bloody Iraq as passing over a bridge—controlled by a terrorist sitting at a negotiating table. The Sunnis fought to induce America into pressing their demands on other Iraqis, believing they could, by force of arms, obtain concessions from the U.S. that they could never obtain from their fellow Iraqis. They were correct. Iraq's majority, for their part, were dismayed that the American government was negotiating with their enemies behind the backs of the native people, even as it had decades ago in Vietnam.

Read the whole thing.

Free Speech and Antisemitism

It is wrong and a violation of individual rights to arrest people for the ideas they hold. This is the case regardless of the morality or immorality of the ideas involved. Even the publication or broadcast of ideas as viciously evil as holocaust denial deserve to have the protection the law. That's why I do not agree with the this verdict. David Irving may be scum, but being scum is not a crime and should not result in imprisonment. Irving deserves to be socially shunned.

Speaking of antisemitism, for an interesting review of the history of antisemitism, one could do a lot worse than read this interesting essay by Middle East Historian Bernad Lewis. It includes a good review of Arab attitudes before and after the creation of the State of Israel.

Materialism in a new form
Via Andrew Sullivan, I learned of this fascinating book review. It's essays like this that make me miss my lapsed NY Times subscription. New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, does a pretty good job setting Daniel Dennett straight in Dennett's absurd attempts to explain religion as somehow an evolutionary phenomenon. There is much in Wieseltier's review that I can agree with, for example the following passage:

For Dennett, thinking historically absolves one of thinking philosophically. Is the theistic account of the cosmos true or false? Dennett, amazingly, does not care. "The goal of either proving or disproving God's existence," he concludes, is "not very important." It is history, not philosophy, that will break religion's spell. The story of religion's development will extirpate it. "In order to explain the hold that various religious ideas and practices have on people," he writes, "we need to understand the evolution of the human mind."

and also this passage:

It will be plain that Dennett's approach to religion is contrived to evade religion's substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.

And, indeed, rationalism, in the strict philosophic sense of Spinoza and Leibniz, is closer to mysticism. But the point is well taken -- reason is neither materialistic nor rationalistic. It must be objective and thus include both method and content or it is empty. There are a number of other really good points that Wieseltier makes, though at times I think he rejects what I might term biological naturalism a bit too much. The mind is a natural biological product of evolution (since everything about us is) but its nature is the one that Wieseltier insists gives us our limited independence from our animality. The book review is well worth reading in its entirety.

On the Bush Administration

There's an ongoing debate among Objectivists as to how to evaluate President Bush and his administration. It is not necessarily an easy topic to reach a definitive conclusion about, as there are various conflicting strands of evidence that have accumulated about Bush since he was first elected in 2000 and yet more since his reelection in 2004. In a rough way, one group of Objectivists may be termed critical supporters of Bush, in the sense that they regard Bush, his administration and strategy, as a generally positive force, perhaps the most positive that can be expected within the present culture, despite the many criticisms that can be made of his individual policies.

Among these one can list the folks at The Intellectual Activist, including Robert Tracinski and Jack Wakeland, who, in a recent article for TIA Daily entitled "President Bush Represents the Virtue and Vices Typical of the Honest American" wrote that Bush is "an honest defender of our nation." Wakeland's starts out the article with a plea to fellow Objectivists:

The idea that America is going to lose the war with Islam by ideological corruption is a grave injustice to the man elected to decide our nation's war policy. Objectivists should criticize George Bush for the errors and the sins in his war policy, but we should recognize him as the honest and persistent warrior that he actually is. We should never allow ourselves to vilify such a man--not a man who fights for us.

Another notable Objectivist who arguably falls into this camp is Harry Binswanger, who recently wrote at least in partial defense of Bush and Conservatives in general on his mailing list (HBL) . While he thought Bush's efforts were inadequate, they could not be entirely dismissed as worthless.

The members of the other side of this argument think that Bush does not have any truly redeeming values and thus is, in fact, hurting the cause. They may be termed the critical detractors of Bush and include Scott Holleran of the Concord Crier, Prof. John Lewis of Ashland University, as well as Craig Biddle of new journal The Objective Standard and Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute. Holleran wrote last Thanksgiving that "the President's lowest approval ratings are a thin silver lining, since it shows there is hope if Americans realize we are losing the war and our individual rights and many do." John Lewis recently argued on HBL that the foreign policy mess that Bush has created is worse than what the left might have done. Brook has a long record of criticising the Bush administration's war effort in his lecture appearances. Biddle opposed the reelection of Bush in 2004.

I must admit my own view of Bush has changed substantially over the years. Initially, I did not think much of him. He seemed to be another pragmatic Republican, lacking anything resembling principles. During the 2000 primaries, I thought he was better than McCain, who couldn't stop talking about sacrifices. During the 2000 election, Bush rose somewhat in my estimation, since he stood for a number of issues that I supported including lower taxes, less regulation, drilling in Alaska, and opposition to nation building, which had become a feature of the outgoing Clinton administration. Gore, on the other hand, looked and acted positively scary and his actions since his loss have not made him any less scary. But Bush's initial time in office before September 11, 2001 did not make him seem particularly impressive. His handling of the downing and capture of our spy plane over international waters near China was not to be an opportunity for him to rise to the occasion.

Then came 9/11. I must admit my own thoughts were very much confused at the time. I wanted very much to believe that the seemingly patient and deliberate efforts of the President in Afghanistan would work. His speeches at that time seemed to support an adequately forceful policy against the terrorists and their state sponsors, although it was clear even then that there was much equivocation involved. And even when force was used, it was always less force than seemed to be appropriate, given the magnitude of the attack on us.

Then followed the seemingly endless diplomatic effort to get the world on our side with respect to the Iraq war. Never mind that Iran was the number one sponsor of terror even according to the State Department. Iraq was going to be the next target. There was a case to be made that Iraq needed to be taken out. Iraq certainly had terror connections and either had or was attempting to rebuild its weapons of mass destructions (WMD). And of course, Iraq had never completely submitted to the requirements of the 1990 Gulf War and was shooting at our planes on a daily basis. So in early 2003, Bush lauched a US dominated coalition into Iraq.

Again, while there were early successes in terms of the speed of the operation, it was clear that our military was again restrained in the amount of force they could use. We were altruistically freeing the Iraqi people from the evil dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and thus we were only after the leadership. In the aftermath of the downfall of the regime, in light of the terrorist insurgency that followed, it became clear that a country cannot be ruled by 50-odd people alone. And, new, other hostile forces appeared on the scene, forces that had previously been suppressed by Hussein but were nevertheless equally opposed to us. These forces, such as Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite fundamentalist militia were supported by Iran, who still appears to have been one of the major beneficiaries of our efforts in Iran.

To make a long story short, presently I'm very skeptical of Bush's war efforts. There are some who argue that the replacement of Colin Powell with Condoleeza Rice should have put the President more firmly in charge of the State Department. They claim that some of the diplomatic games in the first administration were the result of Colin Powell's influence. But it seems in the second administration under Rice the reverse has happened. The President, no doubt partly weakened as a result of the mess in Iraq, has taken a very conciliatory diplomatic tone lately. We are not likely to see much more pretend unilateralism from him.

Yet, am I now a critical supporter or a critical detractor? I would say that my highest point of support for the Bush administration came right after 9/11 and has been steadily declining since. I did support him during the last election. Yet, he seems to have done little right and some things really wrong since his reelection, even though (or because) his party controls the two houses of government. I honestly think I would have trouble voting for him again and I'm seriously wondering whether I'll vote Republican in the next election. So, yes, consider me in the critical detractor camp.

Offensive Cartoons

Steven Brockerman of American Renaissance posts what are in fact truly offensive cartoons, namely the ones the Arab/Moslem world has been publishing over the last few years. Of course, it would be incorrect to claim that the Arab or Islamic world is hypocritical -- they never pretended subscribe to the multicultural nonsense present in the West. They, unlike us, have clear objectives.

Space Elevator News

One of the most fascinating technological ideas gain more prominence recently has been the idea of a "space elevator" as a method of reaching Earth Orbit. The elevator would basically consist of a very strong long wire or "tether" that would drop down from space to the ground and allow a climbing machine or robot to climb from Earth all the way to space with the help of lasers on the ground pushing the robots up.

The latest milestone is the achievement of a 1-mile long tether:

A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line.

LiftPort Group, a private US company on a quest to build a space elevator by April 2018, stretched the strong carbon ribbon 1 mile (1.6 km) into the sky from the Arizona desert outside Phoenix in January tests, it announced on Monday.

The company's lofty objective will sound familiar to followers of NASA's Centennial Challenges programme. The desired outcome is a 62,000-mile (99,779 km) tether that robotic lifters – powered by laser beams from Earth – can climb, ferrying cargo, satellites and eventually people into space.

The recent test followed a September 2005 demonstration in which LiftPort's robots climbed 300 metres of ribbon tethered to the Earth and pulled taut by a large balloon. This time around, the company tested an improved cable pulled aloft by three balloons.

It's enough to make one enthusiastic about the space program again. But that's not all:

A platform linking the balloons and the tether was successfully launched and held in place during the test. LiftPort calls the platform HALE, High Altitude Long Endurance, and plans to market it for aerial observation and communication purposes.
...
In March, LiftPort hopes to set up a HALE system in Utah's Mars Desert Research Station and maintain it for three weeks. Then, later in the spring, Laine says he wants to test a 2-mile (3.2-km) tether with robots scaling to at least half way up.

And it's especially encouraging that this is done by a private company.

Another Weimar Germany/Middle East Comparison

This one's by Lee Harris, in an article on TCS Daily entitled "Misunderestimating Moktada al-Sadr". A friend of mine recently suggested that the political situation in Iraq is an experiment. The result of the experiment remains to be seen. If Mr. Harris is correct, the result may not be quite what most of us expected when we enthusiastically supported this war. The article is well worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, often said that Hitler's rise to power was like a fairy tale. Al-Sadr's rise to power, on the other hand, seems suspiciously like a fable from A Thousand and One Nights. What Hitler did was merely improbable; what al-Sadr has done verges on the seemingly impossible. After having twice led bloody uprisings that killed American troops, Sadr is now the most powerful man in an Iraqi government that the American people have created at great sacrifice to themselves, both in lives and in money. Even more bizarrely, Sadr has made it clear that he will use every bit of power he gets in order to fight against us, and to help spread fanatical anti-Americanism through the Muslim world. We could have stopped him early and effectively; but we didn't. And now it is too late for us to do anything except to wonder what new surprise this twisted tale of Scheherazade will next unfold.

Reason in the Middle East

The Jerusalem Post has an excellent column today by Barry Rubin entitled "Appeasement Redux". Here's how it starts:

We have come full circle. Here is how the last great historical era began, the one we seem to be starting over afresh.

It's January 30, 1933, and here's what the Cleveland Press reports from Washington under the headline, "US Unruffled by Hitler Rise."

"High authorities here regard with complacence Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany... They [express] faith that Hitler would act with moderation... Experts based this belief on past events showing that so-called radical groups usually moderated, once in power."

Read the entire column -- it is excellent.

Two Movies

I have recently seen two movies. I enjoyed them very much and I highly recommend them. I had seen both movies before but it was only on the recent viewing of them that I noticed some interesting similarities. Ronin (1998), stars Robert De Niro, with screenplay written by J. D. Zeik and directed by John Frankenheimer. Proof of Life (2000) stars Meg Ryan and Russel Crowe, was written by Tony Gilroy and directed by Taylor Hackford.

For the most part, these movies have little in common. Ronin is a spy/intelligence thriller. The name is taken from Japanese history and describes wandering Samurai who have failed in protecting their master and turned into hired mercenaries. The story focuses on the efforts of an eclectic team of mercenaries to acquire a mysterious package. Proof of Life has more of an action/drama and centers about Meg Ryan's efforts to get her husband back from kidnapping guerrilas in South America with the help of Russel Crowe.

And yet, if one looks at the movies from the perspective of the characters Sam (De Niro) and Terry Thorne (Crowe) then some commonalities are immediately evident. Both Sam and Terry are highly experienced, highly competent, admirable characters. Both Sam and Terry eliminate an incompetent fraud from playing a larger role early in their respective stories. Both Sam and Terry have equally admirable friends in the movie, Vincent (Jean Reno) in the case of Sam and Dino (David Caruso) in the case of Terry. Both Sam and Terry speak foreign languages in the movie. Sam speaks French, while Terry speaks Spanish. Both Sam and Terry fall for the female character in the movie, yet in neither case does a full relationship develop.

I realize this doesn't add up to to very much but I stand by my point that these are both highly enjoyable movies well worth watching.

What's on the web

• Don't miss Gus Van Horn's excellent discussion of "Faith-Based Prisons" and check out his great new template
  
• Diana Hsieh talks about the inadequacy of TOC's response to the Danish cartoon controversy
• George Reisman has recently added a blog
• My review of Andrew Bernstein's The Capitalist Manifesto is now up on Nicholas Provenzo's Rule of Reason Blog and will be on the upcoming Center for the Advancement of Capitalism website
  

Obscenity of the Day

If there was any confusion about the state of politics in Europe at this time, this story brought to my attention by a friend of mine should put it to rest. Unfortunately European politicians are firmly on the side of appeasement and appear to have learned exactly zero from WWII.

Scientists & Altruist Confusions

LiveScience.com is today featuring the following story:

Altruistic Love Related to Happier Marriages

Altruism may breed better marriages, a new study suggests. Or, the data might mean that good marriages make people more altruistic.

Whatever, altruism and happiness seem to go together in the realm of love.

Sadly, scientists have mostly been profoundly ignorant of what altruism (or for that matter love) means. In this case they attempted to test for it through the following method:

Study participants were asked whether they agreed with statements that define altruism, such as, "I'd rather suffer myself than let the one I love suffer," and "I'm willing to sacrifice my own wishes to let the one I love achieve his or hers."

Sorry, incorrect! That question not only does not define altruism, it is the opposite of altruism it is acting in one's self-interest. Altruism as a word was originated by Auguste Comte and means in effect "otherism." It means that one's moral purpose in life ought to be the welfare of others. It was invented as an antonym for egoism. But if egoism means anything it means concern for one's interests or values. What could be a higher value than the spouse one loves? Is it selfless, to wish to die rather than see one's spouse suffer? No it isn't! Not if one selfishly wishes to live only a certain kind of life and anything else is worse than death. To show concern for one's top values even at the cost of some suffering is to choose a higher value (the spouse's life) over a lower value one's own (presumably temporary) suffering, is not selflessness but a sign of integrity and pride, thoroughly egoistic virtues.

Objectivist Conference in Denver Colorado Coming Up

I have not had a chance yet to go to a multi-day Objectivist conference (I have been to single day events) but I hear from people who have gone they are most enjoyable experiences. Colorado's Front Range Objectivism is holding an upcoming "Weekend Conference on Law, Individual Rights and the Judicial System." It will be held from March 4th-5th in Denver, Colorado. The speakers will include Tara Smith, Amy Peikoff, Eric Daniels, and Dana Berliner. With speakers like these it promises to be an event to remember. For all the details, plus online registration, visit:

http://www.frontrangeobjectivism.com/2006-law.html

The early registration deadline is this Saturday, February 11th. (Save $75!) so act now!